[28.10.2022]
General Designer and Founder of uSky Transport Anatoli Unitsky gave an interview for the Emarati TV program, where he seized the opportunity to speak about the features of uSky Transport & Infrastructure Technology and the results of 4 years of uSky Transport in the UAE.
“Visually, string-rail lines resemble a monorail or a cable car, but, actually, the string rail is completely different from everything that has been done in the transportation industries to date. Our transport and infrastructure complexes are many times superior to their counterparts in terms of eco-friendliness, efficiency, comfort and safety.
uSky transport are systems of cargo and passenger transportation by steel wheel electric vehicles we named uPod.
uPods possess unique aerodynamics, anti-derailment system, and smart security, control, power, and communications systems. Our electric car moves high above the ground, out of the zone of possible collision with traditional vehicles – cars, buses, trams, as well as pedestrians, domestic and wild animals and any other surface objects. This increases transportation safety by about a thousand times and opens up the possibility of all-weather round-the-clock operation by eliminating the human factor.
As we confirmed the operating capacity of our uSky technology, we are beginning its commercial realization in the Middle East. In the city of Sharjah, we are creating a global base for development and promotion of our breakthrough transport and infrastructure tech – the uSky Test & Certification Centre.
In the United Arab Emirates, we are not building just test tracks but innovative technological platforms, and for those platforms all of the associated infrastructure is being created.
About a year ago, we began pilot operation of the first transport and infrastructure complex in the UAE with a 400-meter-long flexible type of track. The complex includes not just the actual cargo and passenger rolling stock which would be the unmanned steel wheel electric vehicles, but also all the necessary infrastructure:
– rolling stock maintenance station;
– passenger station, complete with an elevator and automatic platform gates;
– pre-stressed string-rail overpass with a total tension of about two hundred tons;
– automated control system;
– control room;
– power supply and communication systems, building services and other components.
Today, the uSky complex in Sharjah is under control operation. In this period, we managed, "in field conditions ", with real-life factors and experience of transporting large numbers of passengers, to perform testing and pilot scale-industrial optimization of all the main processes, and to work out the operation rules. We solved maintenance issues of stations, of string-rail overpasses, of automated system management, of utilities systems and other building blocks.
The next important step was getting the tropical version of uSky transport and infrastructure complex certified with all the main building blocks in accordance with international standards, which we successfully did in 2021. Certificate was issued by authority of the independent TÜV SW company.
All of those things put together allowed us to make significant progress on the commercial projects. For other projects, 2 more complexes are currently being built in the uSky Test & Certification Centre, with each overpass 2400 m long.
I think, I have a right to be proud of my team and our engineering school. They have two technological platforms of equal worth created from scratch, R&D platform and the scientific one. Today, over a thousand employees work on implementing our projects in an international group of companies, and most of our people are scientists and engineers.
I would like to express my sincere gratitude to H.H. Dr. Sheikh Sultan bin Muhammad Al Qasimi, Ruler of Sharjah and H.E. Hussain Al Mahmoudi, CEO of Sharjah Research, Technology and Innovation Park, for all the opportunities and assistance they have provided and continue to provide.
We are sincerely interested in continued cooperation, as our group of companies is now rapidly developing and opens up the farthest horizons for all of us, in large part, due to that continued support.”